When our government goes out of its way to try and convince us that light vehicles are as safe as larger ones, does it make you wonder why they’re so determined to make their point?

You might be surprised, but here’s what I found on a website belonging to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. (ORNL is a division of the U. S. Dept. of Energy.)The ORNL says it’s a “myth” that lighter cars are less safe than heavier vehicles; the reality is that “new materials can make cars lighter and as safe as heavier vehicles”. Here you can see for yourself what they say:
Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Essentially, the ORNL, and indirectly, the U.S. government, is asking us to believe that light cars are as safe...

Here's the conflation:=> Accidents do happen and when they do many of us want to survive, maybe even walk away. So Insurance Institute for Highway Safety crash test results are the best predictor of your survival. <=

What you've got there is not a safety test. That's a crash test. A crash test measures the effects of impact, while a safety test, applied to a car, would measure things like cornering, braking, control under skid, steering response etc..... Notice what all of those are? Dynamics that relate to *ACTIVE* propulsion and direction of a motorized vehicle. Because that's exactly what driving is. And those parameters can be (and are) measured, at least by those entities who understand what driving is.

On the other hand when you're measuring a crash test you're measuring the amount of punishment a completely *PASSIVE* object can sustain. Even if the object is moving, it's obviously out of control (else there would be no crash), so it's still passive. That's certainly NOT driving; it's being a target. You've assumed the crash has already happened and stripped the driver of any involvement. It's like judging a bicycle not on its weight and aerodynamics and tires, but on how much I can bash it up with this here baseball bat. It's got nothing to do with what the object *does*.

Unless your name is Harry Houdini I'm not clear on why anyone would want to drive a target instead of a car, but that's all you have when you run crash tests and call them safety tests. You might as well be measuring the effects on the poor slob who sits on the seat in an amusement park dunking booth.

Crash tests are an important part of design, but they say nothing about the car as a moving object (and a car is exactly a moving object) --which is a most convenient thing if you're selling Behemoths that handle with the agility of a steamroller, because if you published the results of actual legitimate safety tests, sales would plummet. And that, I suspect, is exactly why we have corporate shills running crash tests and calling them safety tests. That's just dishonest. Especially when such crash tests are held up as the alpha and omega of "safety", while the actual safety tests are never heard from.

Don't worry about me, 412; I've been driving since the Johnson administration, big cars, small cars, trucks, trailers, well over a million miles all over this continent (757 of them today) and I've seen every imaginable and twice as many unimaginable moves by those you've charitably dubbed the "less skilled" (I have a few slightly more colourful terms for them in the moment) and in all those miles I've never been in anything bigger than a fender bender, wheras I've been able to anticipate, negotiate, dance around and slalom through more unforeseen potential ghastly situations than I could recount (although I have a few faves), specifically because I WAS driving a safely designed (read: controllable) car and not a behemoth.

Oh yeah, I drove a few behemoths too. Just enough to get a feel. That's why I got rid of them.

Accidents do happen and when they do many of us want to survive, maybe even walk away. So Insurance Institute for Highway Safety crash test results are the best predictor of your survival.Often a technically superior driver in his small, quick cars cause many wrecks even if they are not caught up in the carnage; their wake destabilizes all around them leading to the destruction."sluggopyle-Message Posted: Sep 21, 2011 10:53:32 AM", relies on his presumed skill to avoid wrecks and luck that some less skilled driver on the shared roads of America does not impale him.Arrogance and luck are not what will save your life.

Accidents do happen and when they do many of us want to survive, maybe even walk away. So Insurance Institute for Highway Safety crash test results are the best predictor of your survival.Often a technically superior driver in his small, quick cars cause many wrecks even if they are not caught up in the carnage; their wake destabilizes all around them leading to the destruction."sluggopyle-Message Posted: Sep 21, 2011 10:53:32 AM", relies on his presumed skill to avoid wrecks and luck that some less skilled driver on the shared roads of America does not impale him.Arrogance and luck are not what will save your life.

No-- most larger cars are larger. And that means LESS safe because more mass means less maneuverability. You can't change the laws of physics by royal fiat.

If you're going to assess safety, then measure safety. That's not what this article is about. These are CRASH tests. Safety means you don't crash in the first place --not that you sit out in the road like a passive chump waiting to see how much you can absorb.

A CRASH test assumes the crash has already happened. And if you're trapped in a typical inverted bathtub Detroit likes to sell, you will. Because you don't have the dexterity to avoid it. So you've just sentenced yourself to impact, hoping you have enough armor to survive it. How smart is that?

Look at it this way: we're coming fast down a hill and suddenly a sharp curve presents. I'm riding a mountain lion, you're riding a hippo, and we're going the same speed. Guess which one of us goes home in the ambulance wondering why they bought the "safety" illusion propagated by a car industry that profits from putting that myth out. I mean this is not rocket science. It's more like centrifugal force science. And this article is nothing more than a cheap propaganda piece for that industry and its myth.

I hope you brought an umbrella, 'cause its raining cold hard facts up in here.

When I'm in a lighter car and a heavier car (truck) hits me, it doesn't matter a lot what happens to the car; my body, due to inertia will bounce around a lot more than if I were in the larger car. This can be mitigated by expensive crash equipment, but it can only reduce the injury.

=> The myth is true though, at least to a degree. Having worked at a tow yard, I saw them first hand come in from accidents. <=

And that shows ---what?

Let's say you're a visitor from Planet Schmanet. You happen to arrive on earth in a war zone at a MASH unit. Shall you then conclude from what you see that the inhabitants of this planet are routinely born bleeding from every orifice with no discernible pattern of limbs? Shall you then conclude that the planet is "unsafe" for said humans?

Of course not, because you didn't see how they got that way. You don't make a picture out of a pixel.

I ran a crash test on this entire article and its mindless premise. It was obliterated. Self-inflicted wounds I'm afraid.

Technology being equal among vehicles in a crash, the safety cages can only do so much for a little car against a much larger object. The smaller car would probably 'bounce' off the larger one and redirect itself into oncoming traffic and suffer many hits.

=> Still, smaller vehicles are less safe than larger ones. It's a law of physics that isn't easily ignored. <=

Not true at all.Less mass means less mass. It has nothing in itself to do with "safety".

Claiming you're going to rate cars for safety and then instead analyzing crash tests, is apples and oranges. It's a loaded question, the equivalent of "have you stopped beating your wife?". Equating "car safety" to crash test results assumes the crash MUST happen, and that's simply not the case. It's dishonest. This entire article is dishonest -- complete with the setting up of an adversary strawman link that doesn't go anywhere.

Come on people, this is not that deep. At least listen to the music when you're being played like a cheap banjo.

Interesting. The myth is true though, at least to a degree. Having worked at a tow yard, I saw them first hand come in from accidents. However, the article does point out that the newer lighter materials can make vehicles lighter and safer which is true. Still, smaller vehicles are less safe than larger ones. It's a law of physics that isn't easily ignored.

Actually what common sense indicates is that the premise is "car safety", yet the reasoning then goes to studies of crash tests, and that's dishonest. With a safe car there's no crash to measure. As for the eventual crash protection anyway, what the laws of physics indicate is actually not what you think.

I still wonder how convenient it is that the original poster takes issue with a study to which the link does not work. That's a monologue. It's a debate with an opponent who's already gagged before the debate starts. One wonders why that's necessary.

(And it's bad postering; I ALWAYS check my links and if they don't work I fix 'em)

Common sense, let alone the laws of physics, (which the ORNL seems to be lacking) indicates that smaller, lighter vehicles provide less crash protection to their occupants than larger, heavier vehicles.

Perhaps it's all a part of the Obama health care package... the more highway fatalities we have, the fewer medicare and assisted living claims there will be, not to mention the reduction in social security benefit payments.

When are they going to downsize and lighten the presidential limousine? While they are at it, how about making smaller, lighter tanks and armored military vehicles. I'm sure our troops would appreciate the increased mileage between fuel stops.

i remember several years ago when riding with my brother in his Blazzer through the mountains and it was drizzling. there was an accident up ahead and everyone ahead of us started stoping for it. my brother started tapping his brakes to slow down and stop, and then he started pumping them for everything he was worth because we were starting to hydroplane. he started honking the horn while he was still pumping the brakes and trying to veer the steering wheel to get some traction on anything to regain control, the car ahead of us noticed and pulled off to get into the median and out of our way, but we still ended up tapping the guy. actually we barely touched him, but you wouldn't know it from the damage to the other guy. the other guy was in a 1 yr old 4-door saturn vs. us in a 7 yr old chevy blazzer. 2/3 of his trunk was either crushed or sheared away and he said that it felt like and earthquake to him and his wife and they had bumps and bruises to prove it, us in the blazzer barely felt that we'd hit anything and the blazzer only suffered a cracked headlight frame.

so the government can take their propoganda and go try to sell it to someone else. i have first-hand experience so i'm not buying their BS.

i have to laugh at the comments made comparing post accident pics to the safety design of a vehicle. the next time that you are in an accident,remember this, it doesn't matter what your vehicle looks like, it only matters what the drivers and occupants look like.

id rather have my vehicle fold up like an accordion rather than have my face or chest absorb that type of impact. but from the responses that are on this post, it seems some members appreciate personal deformity over vehicle damage. to each their own...

"Blinded by science" is a good way to put it. Or more likely, by car companies shilling their gross inverted bathtubs on wheels by funding studies and tests and reports that report what they want reported.

Again and again these so-called "safety" tests and "safety" ratings are not that at all. They are CRASH tests. IMPACT tests. And the question of how a car reacts to a collision is a completely different question from how "safe" that car is. A CRASH test assumes that the crash is not only inevitable, it has already happened. That's just not reality.

A "safe" car handles; a Hippomobile does not. That's why they paint these worst-possible-case scenarios as "safety" ratings. It's propaganda to sell the Hippomobile. Because small doesn't make them as much money. Think about it.

The fact is, the smaller nimble car won't be part of that pileup that the fat one can't avoid. THAT's where safety lives. And the more the unwashed drones continue to obediently buy Hippomobiles, the more out-of-control wackos there are going to be for the rest of us to slalom around.

compared to the SUV that ran over my aunt & uncle's Ford Focus, they didn't have a chance ... but the driver of the SUV was also severely injured, lost a leg, and maybe her life after being comatose for months (they won't notify us, or post an obituary, on legal advice)